Ask any business journalist who knew Rana Kapoor, and the abiding image of the ex-Yes Bank chief he will replay is of a man who pushed himself and his achievements at all costs. This writer, once at a journalism awards event supported by Yes Bank, saw Rana Kapoor’s public relations team grabbing in advance the two seats on either side of the chair reserved for the chief guest. At that event, the chief guest was the then Union Minister of Law and Justice, Kapil Sibal. On inquiry, the PR team leader revealed this was the standing instruction - Rana Kapoor must be seated next to the chief guest, if he was a central minister.
The rise of Rana Kapoor is inextricably entwined with Yes Bank. The two launched when Yes Bank, two decades ago, got a banking license at a time when the Reserve Bank (RBI) was tight-fisted about allowing private sector banks. Known to very few, the initial promoter of the venture was not Rana Kapoor, but one Harkirat Singh, who had a proven track record at Grindlays and Deutsche Bank. He put together the package - the Dutch Rabobank, as lead investor, along with Rana Kapoor and his brother-in-law, an old school banker, Ashok Kapur.
Killer instinct
Rana Kapoor exhibited his killer instinct of eliminating competition early by removing all traces of his partners as soon as he could. First it was Harkirat Singh who was pushed out. In a press release announcing his exit in April 2003, Harkirat said: “My dream was to have a bank in the private sector which catered to rural India, with a social angle. Somewhere, all that changed.”
Ashok Kapur had brought in Rana Kapoor, but as soon as Yes Bank began to fly, Rana got about eliminating Ashok Kapur’s influence. As tragic fate would have it, Ashok Kapur was gunned down during the terror attack at the Oberoi Trident on November 26, 2008. But before the embers of his funeral pyre could die, Rana Kapoor set about excluding Kapur’s wife, Madhu, and his daughter Shagun Kapur Gogia from their rights as investors and as claimants of a seat on the bank’s board of directors.
After years of lobbying the RBI and the Yes Bank, the two ladies fought and won a stellar legal battle. The Bombay High Court ruled in their favour, restoring Madhu Kapur’s position in the bank and rapping Rana Kapoor for playing the CEO bully.
These and other colourful tales of the rise and fall of Rana Kapoor are brought together in an easy-reading book: ‘Yes Man - The untold story of Rana Kapoor’ by Pavan C Lall. Full of anecdotes, Lall takes you through the early period of blistering growth of Yes Bank powered by Kapoor’s insatiable ambition and a successful IPO. By 2015, the first cracks are seen, and 2-3 years later the bank is saddled with bad loans to companies like Jet, Cox & Kings and C G Power that were folding up. And then there is the final leg of the story of King Kong being forced out from Yes Bank in January 2020, and then the final ignominy of being arrested 2 months later for money laundering.
Through the book, Lall paints the picture of a banker not in step with his peers. He is not the quiet, understated guy in a grey suit, as most bankers are. In fact, he is loud about his achievements. Growth-at-anycost is his mantra. He also quite brazenly feathers his own nest and that of his three daughters at the cost of the bank.
Personal greed
What we miss in the book though is an inside view. While there is plenty of anecdotal material from friends and foes, the reader would like to go beyond the journalistic piecing together of the action to understanding the real machinations inside the bank. Written from outside, there is also the problem of not being told the Rana Kapoor side of the story. As a reader, I was looking for Rana Kapoor as the family man - what was the relationship with his wife? And with his daughters, Radha, Rakhee and Roshni?
For instance, Lall’s anecdotes on how Rana Kapoor insulted Ashok Kapur’s wife, Madhu, at a party, and then turned a family patch-up meeting into a boorish round of expletive hurling at Madhu and her daughter, speaks volumes about the banker’s character. Also, what has been excellently pieced together is how a bank was driven to the ground by personal greed and ambition.
Hidden behind bluster and PR charm, Rana Kapoor hid over Rs 40,000 crore of non-performing assets; and when it blew up, between August 2019 and September 2019, Yes Bank shareholders lost 84% of their share value as the stock went into a free fall from Rs 366 to Rs 60. The big question the book leaves us with is: Why does the regulator - the Reserve Bank - begin to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted? Shagun Kapur Gogia, Ashok Kapur’s daughter, had written more than 30 letters to the RBI piecing all the information together. Why was she ignored?